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UK Digital Ad Spend To Continue Strong Growth

Strong demand in the digital advertising market will see UK digital ad spending continue to grow by double figures throughout 2016 and beyond, with the industry shrugging off concerns about the impact of Brexit.

That's according to eMarketer, which has released its latest figures, predicting that digital ad spending will grow by 12 per cent year-on-year over the course of 2016, and by 10 per cent in 2017, when it will also exceed £10bn for the first time ever.

UK spending among the largest players in digital advertising continues to outpace the average rate of growth. Facebook is expected to see an increase of 31.1 per cent this year, and 22.8 per cent in 2017, while Google remains just ahead of average spending growth with 13.9 per cent in 2016 and 10 per cent next year.

While Google may appear slow compared to Facebook's dramatic rise, this year's growth is actually more than double what was originally predicted back in February thanks largely to stronger-than-expected mobile ad revenues. Google's £3.8bn ad revenues will account for almost 40 per cent of all digital ad spending in the UK.

"Across search and social media, mobile's influence on ad spending continues to be significant," said Bill Fisher, senior analyst at eMarketer. "This is simply a response to consumer behaviour, with the majority of social media usage now occurring on mobile, and mobile search behaviour too, becoming more pronounced."

Twitter saw huge growth last year, with 71.1 per cent, but that increase has dramatically slumped this year as stagnating user growth sees less advertisers flocking to the social network. 2016 revenues are expected to grow by only 13.2 per cent, behind Google and only just ahead of average rates.

Whether news of Twitter's potential sale to a new owner, or any innovations such a sale might bring, can rejuvenate the platform's user growth and bring in more advertisers will remain to be seen.